Research on College Students' Emotional Alienation in the Context of Digital Education: A Case Study of Wuhan College of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) to investigate the prevalence of students’ emotional alienation in digital learning environments; 2) to explore the influencing factors and formation mechanisms of emotional alienation among college students; and 3) to develop targeted intervention strategies for alleviating emotional alienation. This study employed a mixed-methods design targeting undergraduates from Wuhan College of Arts and Sciences as the research population, using stratified random sampling to select 390 participants for quantitative questionnaire survey and purposeful sampling to select 30 students, teachers, and counselors for qualitative semi-structured interviews, with data analyzed via SPSS 26.0, AMOS 24.0, and NVivo 12. Major Findings included: 1) On the current status of emotional alienation, it was found that students reported a moderate level of emotional alienation (M = 3.18, SD = 0.64), with online learning burnout as the most severe dimension (M = 3.42, SD = 0.72) and significant differences across grades and majors; 2) On the correlation between influencing factors and emotional alienation, it was found that digital learning load was positively correlated with emotional alienation (r = 0.51, p < 0.01), while platform interaction quality and teacher emotional engagement were negatively correlated (r = -0.42, -0.58, p < 0.01), teacher emotional engagement played a significant partial mediating role accounting for 38.4% of the effect; and 3) On the regulatory mechanism of emotional alienation, it was found that psychological capital significantly moderated the relationship between digital education experience and emotional alienation.